


The One Who Waits

by Killer8ees



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Absence, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Minor Character Death, Reunions, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 02:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7134101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killer8ees/pseuds/Killer8ees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course a funeral needs rain. Of course drama is necessary.<br/>Ahead of him, he sees his high school friends in their own contingent, solemn but not silent. They knew his mother from before: before he went to college, before his father died and she moved into this tiny town and a house that, too, was dying. He envies their one-sided memories.<br/>Bokuto glances back at him and their eyes lock for a moment. </p>
<p>The Lover, surrounded by strings of events and accidents, considers it fate despite knowing better. To wait, to mourn, to remake oneself thereafter, is to become worthy of being retrieved. To love, is to be worthy of wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Who Waits

 

 

Akaashi takes the pot off the stove just as it starts its distressed whistle. He scrapes out the loose leaves of tea from the old canister, a basic brand he buys when he doesn’t care. He fishes out the tinge of rust that falls from the can into the waiting water, and sets the spoon aside.

There’s a low murmur from the other room as he waits by the stove. A shuffle of friends filtering through the house, their shoes scraping against the worn wood as they meander through too-small doorways, under buckling posts and lintels. November has come. The whole house feels water-soaked, sagging at its own seams. He cleaned most of it, hauling trash bags out one by one, collected like body bags in the front lawn, but it’s simply an oldass house. Nothing to see here.

He gets the six cups from the cupboard he was able to salvage, cleaning them once more for good measure before he pours the tea. Its steam rises, the too familiar smell.   

“Hey,” Bokuto says from behind him.

Each cup fills in careful succession.

“Hey, what’s up?” Bokuto asks, uselessly.

“Would you like any tea? There aren’t any cups left after these.”

Something is growing in his stomach. He feels it scrape against his ribs every time he opens his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah sure,” he says too quickly, rushed as he comes to Akaashi’s side.

He can’t make eye contact with him. He can’t look at the black suit. He can’t do it.

“It’s good seeing everyone again,” Bokuto continues, a mouth machine just talking, “it’s good seeing you again.”

He sucks his teeth without meaning to, trying to steal himself before going back into the other room. Bokuto is watching him, a concerned scrutiny that makes him want to peal his skin off. But now, what language fails, his body utters.

“I’m sorry,” Bokuto whispers. Always, Bokuto’s voice is too damn loud. An earthquake knocking on the cracked dam, every syllable another seismic wave. He needs silence.

“There’s nothing—“ there it is, the crack. “There is nothing you have to be sorry for, thank you for coming.”

Bokuto reaches out, to touch him somehow, a movement of faults. He recoils. Akaashi picks up the cups, the ceramic clinks together in his hands, and he leaves.

  


* * * 

  


He sits in his crumpled suit, waiting. The dark shadows streaking the windows makes the whole place look sunk, like the water level has breached the sills. Each person, in turn, comes to offer condolences, mutter their apologies, to which he thanks them (absolves them) and sends them on their way. This, he imagines, is the worst part of the whole affair. His inertia feeds whatever is inside him, something alive lurches up the walls of his gut.

His mother waits, too, at the other side of the room. He has a clear line of sight to her open casket. He stares just above it, beyond it, anywhere but there. He is thankful for each new face in front of him—something else to look at.

In the doorway, he hears his cousins, aunts, and uncles whispering: rumors, curses, horrible words. He keeps his face as usual: impassive, unmoved.

He swallows the bile threatening the back of his throat and digs his heels into his decorum. He wears politeness well, like another skin to make him more like _people_ when, right now, he feels anything but.

  


* * * 

  


The procession is uninteresting, and he wishes he could skip it like a fast forward button. Lines of people who never visit otherwise make their way from the secluded house down to the cemetery at the edge of town. It’s a short enough way to walk, if the weather was good. Instead, the rain has only just let up, and swollen clouds still sitting on the horizon. They slog down the dirt road, mud caking expensive shoes and nipping at hemlines. His aunt’s heel sinks into the soft earth and it refuses to cough the shoe back up for some time.

Of course a funeral needs rain. Of course drama is necessary.

Ahead of him, he sees his high school friends in their own contingent, solemn but not silent. They knew his mother from before: before he went to college, before his father died and she moved into this tiny town and a house that, too, was dying. He envies their one-sided memories.

Bokuto glances back at him and their eyes lock for a moment. Akaashi doesn’t know how to reassure him not to worry—a smile is inappropriate right now—but eventually, he turns away from Akaashi’s blank stare. For now, it will do.

  


* * *

  


With a struggle, he frees the broken umbrella he found (again) while cleaning the house, its mysterious contraption opens in a shake of rain above his head. He found many trinkets in the old place. He embalmed the house with his own hands: wiped the grime that clung to its windowpanes, restored what peeling lacquer he could, threw out the perished non-perishables that lined all the molding, removed the splinters his skin saved from the floorboards. The ritual was cleansing, somewhat. The list of things he had never known about his mother, even after touching all the possessions she too had touched: innumerable. The pattern of excess, the cumulative time capsules that passed between their past and present. Where did she get this old umbrella, for starters?

Slowly, the casket lowers. He does not cry. The only water on his suit comes from the rain rendered by the holes above his head.

The final rites are read, then the undertakers come to do their job. Nothing special about this for them. He envies their indifference.

“Akaashi, do you want to share with me?” Bokuto is at his side, again, holding out his sleek umbrella. The expensive cherry wood of the handle is not lost on Akaashi.

“I’m alright, thank you for offering.”

“But—“

“This was my mothers, it feels fitting. I’m more than happy to keep with this one.”

He nods, yet lingers. Bokuto grew another inch at some point, he can tell. He holds the umbrella just high enough to cover them both, he’s tall enough to do it now. He watches them replant the dirt, shovels moving quickly against the rain, how they bob up and down against the wet earth.

“Hey Akaashi.”

Too loud.

“Hey Akaashi, the rain’s only getting harder and I really understand you wanting to be out here, and I respect that—“

He’s rambling.

“—But I just want to make sure you don’t get sick on top of this, so Komi said I should ask you if—“

He’s trying to fill the space.

“—you wanted to go inside, and I know you’re having a lot of feelings right now but—“

An impossible task.

“—we’re all worried about you and if you want to talk, I am here and—“

“Bokuto, I don’t feel a damn thing.”

Immediately, he quiets.

The animal in Akaashi’s stomach has clawed its way out. His peoplesuit is slipping. The mask he’s been wearing, he’s been pointing to it the whole time, begging Bokuto to notice the artifice. Now, it falls. Dead like his mother. He is feral.

“My mother was a hoarder and never told me. The coroner didn’t tell me how she died, just took the body. She died in a chair. It stank. I had to clean up the sloughed off skin and shit myself. Now, my friends and family are here and I can’t stand any of it. Fuck, I can’t do this,” he turns away but doesn’t leave.

He doesn’t cry, still. Just looks away, disgusted at the prospect of continuing. Too far gone, now, not to.

“You,” and for the first time in years he’s raising his voice, “You don’t get to go to off like that, no notice, no word for _years,_ and then show up like it’s fine. You don’t even understand how shitty it is to pull this at my mother’s funeral, of all places. This is next level, even for you. You don’t even understand.”

Before Bokuto can say anything, he storms off, mood darker than the clouds. He doesn’t look back, afraid he’ll turn to salt, something to be washed away in the rain.

  


* * *

  


To be in love, is to wait. Always, there is an Other and a Lover. The Lover is that which sits by the phone, broods in cafes stricken, dreams the anxiety of being forgotten, exists under tyranny and oblation. The Other is both object and subject, to be the Other is to be unique, singular, to be whole. To be in love is to self-obliterate. Love is always an unfinished business.

His friends are congregated in the house, again. Many have gone to hotels and inns, but some are staying here, with sleeping bags and air mattresses and pillow forts—they worry about him being alone in the house at night.

It sits as a skeleton now, empty of the stench and shit. What a lonely catastrophe it was. Both its solitary creation and secluded dismantlement. Once he gets in the creaking door, he chucks the umbrella in another black bag, same color as his suit, as his hair, as the hearse, as the casket.  

Now, he cries. A brute sound from the back of his throat, he collapses in on himself like a black hole, still clutching the black plastic bag. His screams call the whole house to attention: his cousins watch his breakdown from the doorway, surprised yet still unsympathetic. His work friends hover, still unsure of their place in the whole matter, still unsure how to care the correct amount. His friends from school swarm, immediately at his side as the pipe of his throat rusts to a hoarse groan. They loosen his grip from the trash bag, they usher him to safety.

 

  


His sweater keeps slipping down his shoulder till it’s almost comical. He’s had it since high school, still has the faded mascot on it and everything. There’s one fireplace in the house and they gather around it in the evenings—the heat was turned off long ago and Akaashi didn’t see the point of going through the process to turn it back on just for this last rite. A quotidian decision becomes poetic. That’s just the nature of this game—he’s been finding meaning in rat poop for a week now.

Bokuto sits with him, which he didn’t ask for. Shirofuku and Konoha and Komi have all gone to get food back in town. His extended family let themselves out after his outburst, and his work friends vacillate (some left and some stayed and he didn’t care one bit).

The animal has tired itself out. He hasn’t put his peoplesuit back on just yet, but he’s out of cruelty for now. It’s already been bled to death.

Bokuto watches the flames with a childlike fascination, leaning his forehead right against the mantle for the hell of it. He looks older, now, Akaashi thinks. He’s not sure if it’s the glow of soft light or if it’s his first time actually _looking_ at Bokuto since he got here. He was soaked when he came in, Komi said. Apparently, after Akaashi yelled at him, he just stood out in the rain until someone came, until he was told it was safe to approach once more.

How stupid. If only he could’ve stayed put before.

 

“My boyfriend didn’t come,” Akaashi says, finally. He breaks the silence if only out of appreciation that Bokuto, for once, didn’t press the conversation. He came back this time, and voluntarily laid his neck down for Akaashi’s sword.

Bokuto looks over, but stays silent.

Akaashi’s voice is still shot, but he continues even with his words corroded, “Four months is always the kicker, isn’t it? If you’re dating for less than that, obviously you don’t go to the funeral. If you’re dating for a year, you obviously do. But four months,” he sighs.

The Lover is the one who waits. Never has Akaashi been the Other.

“I,” his words are hesitant. For once, Bokuto isn’t a stream of conscious. “I haven’t dated much, since I left. So, I wouldn’t know, but.”

“Yes, well I’m clearly not dating him anymore after he pulled that shit, so.” He sips the good sake (his mother had twenty-two bottles of the stuff) and doesn’t flinch.

“Thank god,” Bokuto sighs under his breath.

“What?”

“I was going to say he sounds like an asshole, but I didn’t want to insult him. But yeah, Akaashi, he sounds like an asshole.”

He watches his expression for a moment, then looks back at the fire, “Historically, I only seem to fall for assholes, so I suppose there is no surprise there.”

Another silence settles and he’s not sure if Bokuto picked up on it or not. If he still knows Bokuto even half as well as he used to, it probably blew right past him.

“I’m sorry about San Francisco,” he says finally.

“What are you sorry for?” Akaashi asks, another sip of the rice wine if they’re going to get into this shit tonight.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry I didn’t call once I got back. I got your calls, I really did. And you know I left messages, but,” he frowns, “I really fucked it up, Akaashi. I know it was stupid, and I know I let us fall out of contact like that. I know that was on me.”

Akaashi appraises him for a moment. “I know I’m supposed to say I’m sorry too, but I can’t right now. I simply don’t have it in me, Bokuto.”

“You don’t--! You don’t have to! I’m not saying it so you’ll apologize too! I just wanted to say it.”

“Thank you,” he nods. “Thanks.”

Another small silence before Bokuto breaks it again.

“I want to ask about your life but I don’t know where to start.”

Akaashi hums in consideration, “It’s been almost four years. At this point, any topic is as good a place to start as any. I mean, of course, despite my best efforts, I’ve seen you play on television and online and all, so I have some sense of where you’ve been the past years.”

“Do you like your job? Your friends from work seem nice.”

He can’t help but laugh at that one.

“What? What did I say?”

“I work in a research lab all day, no one likes it. I look at slides and do math and that’s it, Bokuto.”

Bokuto stares at him.

He’s unnerved when the boy looks so serious, “What is it?”

“It’s been years since I heard you laugh.”

Akaashi tries to keep his usual straight face, but he feels the blood rushing up to his cheeks. The warm glow of the fire keeps it well-enough hidden, though.

“Stick around for once and you just might hear it again.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed to write something different for a second that wasn't the other 37k word monstrosity sitting on my google drive.  
> i've been reading a lot and i always have to write myself 'out' of different authors styles once i finish a book. short stuff is fun but i apologize if it doesn't seem that original.
> 
> i almost titled this "Waiting for Bokuto" but then i thought that was such a poor pun, it was rude.


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